Sep 1, 2026 · 36 min · 14 segments
In this episode, Andrea Abel, Executive Director of Farm Share Austin, discusses the organization's efforts to improve food justice in Austin, Texas. She highlights the challenges of funding cuts, the…
Andrea AbelGuest
Errol SchweizerHost
I think we need to give a little context to our listeners about why this matters, why this is necessary.
And maybe you could tell us a bit about when you mentioned, first of all, the Eastern Crescent of Travis County.
what that implies, what that means, but give us a sort of state of the food system of Austin, Texas, and maybe central Texas, you know, broader since folks probably have some colloquial understandings or impressions, you know, and by the way, it's like, we're not talking like yeehaw, cowboy hats, stereotypes here.
We're talking about major metro area, very cosmopolitan, very diverse, but also like many other major metro areas, very rampant inequalities.
In fact, FarmShare's founders started the nonprofit because they had growing concern about the increasing wealth disparity and wealth distribution in Austin, in Travis County, in Central Texas.
As Austin grew from a sleepy town that was a university town and the state capital and lots of state government, just a few kind of large employers really started to grow with the tech boom.
So you began to see a larger and larger disparity of people with growing wealth.
And then just a really growing class of people who are really struggling to meet their basic needs.
So housing, transportation, food, just everything that it takes to sustain a household, that's just subsistence.
So the organization came together to look at, OK, we are losing land rapidly to development.
So how do we preserve land for farming? OK, so you're preserving this land for farming.
And so you really need to create a community of farmers, a new community of farmers, that know how to farm, that know how to farm with the changing climate and can farm in a way where they're supporting one another.
We have a fundamental belief at FarmShare that food access, and not just any access to food, but food that is delicious and nutrient-dense and meets everybody's personal preferences and needs, is a human right.
And so how do you get that food then, while you're supporting local farmers, get that to people who have food access needs? Yeah.
And so back to this growing disparity is that as Austin has become more and more expensive, it has become more expensive to live in the city.
I think we need to give a little context to our listeners about why this matters, why this is necessary.
And maybe you could tell us a bit about when you mentioned, first of all, the Eastern Crescent of Travis County.
what that implies, what that means, but give us a sort of state of the food system of Austin, Texas, and maybe central Texas, you know, broader since folks probably have some colloquial understandings or impressions, you know, and by the way, it's like, we're not talking like yeehaw, cowboy hats, stereotypes here.
We're talking about major metro area, very cosmopolitan, very diverse, but also like many other major metro areas, very rampant inequalities.
In fact, FarmShare's founders started the nonprofit because they had growing concern about the increasing wealth disparity and wealth distribution in Austin, in Travis County, in Central Texas.
As Austin grew from a sleepy town that was a university town and the state capital and lots of state government, just a few kind of large employers really started to grow with the tech boom.
So you began to see a larger and larger disparity of people with growing wealth.
And then just a really growing class of people who are really struggling to meet their basic needs.
So housing, transportation, food, just everything that it takes to sustain a household, that's just subsistence.
So the organization came together to look at, OK, we are losing land rapidly to development.
So how do we preserve land for farming? OK, so you're preserving this land for farming.
And so you really need to create a community of farmers, a new community of farmers, that know how to farm, that know how to farm with the changing climate and can farm in a way where they're supporting one another.
We have a fundamental belief at FarmShare that food access, and not just any access to food, but food that is delicious and nutrient-dense and meets everybody's personal preferences and needs, is a human right.
And so how do you get that food then, while you're supporting local farmers, get that to people who have food access needs? Yeah.
And so back to this growing disparity is that as Austin has become more and more expensive, it has become more expensive to live in the city.
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